Christians pray over downtown Houston

As a part of a nationwide movement called “God Belongs in My City,” a group of Christians walked around downtown Houston on Saturday morning, worshiping God and praying for the welfare of the city.

Ben Gonzales, the pastor of a church plant north of downtown Houston, tweeted as the group progressed from Discovery Green to Tranquility Park, where they fell to their knees in prayer.

At the beginning of the event, the group sang worship music, led by a guitarist and singer over a megaphone.

Wearing matching black T-shirts and carrying a Christian flag, they prayed at intersections and downtown landmarks, asking for unity between local church bodies, wisdom for local officials, the advancement of God’s name through mission and the salvation of “the lost.”

The event prompted believers with the question: “Just as Christ came to change this world so we as Christians must change ours. We are to take the gospel of salvation to the ends of the earth but how can we do that if we can’t even take it to our city?”

God Belongs in My City has held prayer walks in San Antonio and Harlingen and has planned an event in Dallas this May.

(Special thanks to Gonzales, @htownpastor, for allowing us to share his images.)

Michael, nations have flags, religions have flags, and even large business corporations have flags. If you drive around the many upscale business parks in the Houston area, you will see many of these corporation flags.

Ding ding ding! Christians have freedom of religion. It’s just that now there are enough people of enough diverse backgrounds that the Christians no longer have the luxury of unchallenged majority and monopoly of our government and our culture. They find this frightening, and as humans we fear change and the unknown. This is understandable. Logic and reason (live ong and prosper), though, must ultimately win the day and that may just mean dragging followers of religion into the 21st century whether they like it or not. What’s most unfortunate are the women and minorities who will suffer and die in the meantime, due to the Christian Right’s tightening death grip on our legislation in the meantime.

M4…by that “logic,” it seems like you’re trying to compare the civil rights movement with “the war” on Christianity. It wasn’t long ago when (and you know there are still a few similar scenarios today) just being black was enough deny basic human rights. Look around. Churches take up so much land, they don’t pay taxes, and some of them still aren’t “satisfied” to the point that they want to dictate law. Just about every day, our children are indoctrinated with the pledge of allegiance…and that doesn’t include many of them being forced into going to church on Sundays (and even other times during the week). You can also look at how our politicians use “God” to “justify” some of the most asinine, inhumane and what should be flat out criminal policies. There are so many things we can point to that not only disprove the existence of any kind of “war on Christianity”…if anything…they are evidence of a “war” brought to us BY Christianity.

Why is it that y’all love war so much?
U r so focus on the war outside in this world, but never even think much about the true wars that are on the inside? I’m sure although u guys are against Christians, u sertainly must believe in spirits. It’s a spiritual warfare that has lead the world to be at the close end of times. Fellow viewers. The end is near. Christianity doesent ask u to do anything for God. There is nothing u can do to please him. All he ask is that u believe in Christ that he does for your sins and trust in him so that u may have everlasting life. That’s it!! But this generation doesn’t want to admit they have sin so they refuse the need for a savior

Jesus Urdiales, the end is not near. As a Catholic Christian, I counsel you strongly to focus your spirituality on your own inevitable individual death. You need to be making sure that you yourself are ready to meet God at any time.

Science has shown that God created a universe that is meant to last for many billions of years. And God also created a planet for us human beings on which we obviously can continue living for many millions of years. It is simply absurd to interpret Scripture so literally as to believe that God is suddenly going to cut everything short billions of years prematurely, just to make future history “look like” the stories written by ancient, pre-scientific story tellers.

There will never be a “Rapture.” God’s plan obviously is to allow human existence to continue for as long as possible, until it inevitably comes to an end due to the natural forces of the universe. Every human being who has ever lived or who will ever live must either get sick and die or suffer violent injury and die before he or she can meet the Lord in heaven. That’s everybody, including all of those who believe in “Rapture.”

In my opinion, those of you who believe that “Rapture” will take place during your own lifetimes simply want to believe that you won’t have to get sick and die before you enter heaven. Stop fooling yourselves. Each and every one of you is going to have to get sick and die, just like everybody else.

For myself personally, the “dying” part doesn’t bother me much. It’s the “getting sick” part that scares me.

God did not kill those people. The storms killed those people. Christian belief does not require belief that God is directly controlling everything.

Part of the human condition, as established by God, is that we live in bodies that are part of the natural universe and that therefore are subject to all of the natural laws of that universe. And under those laws of nature, no living creature can live forever. Rather, every living creature must eventually die because of the ordinary hazards of living in this universe.

For individual human beings, death resulting from ordinary hazards of living can come as early as failure to implant on the uterine wall, or as late as the heart suddenly stopping at age 105+, or at any time in between. And “ordinary hazards” includes medical disease at any age, accidental injury at any age, natural disaster of any sort at any age, or just about anything else.

The only sort of death that is actually “evil” is the murder of human beings by human beings. Otherwise, the ages and causes for human deaths have no bearing whatsoever on our Christian concept of a “loving” God.

In fact, by God’s love we humans have been endowed with minds capable of studying and understanding the laws of this universe. And our understanding of those laws allows us to sometimes avoid some earlier death, and instead live on until some later death. If God were to speak to us directly about, say, the storm deaths, God would say something like:

“I HAVE GIVEN YOU BRAINS CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD IN WHICH YOU LIVE. USE THOSE BRAINS TO FIGURE OUT HOW THE STORMS WORK, AND YOU WILL BECOME BETTER ABLE TO PROTECT YOURSELVES FROM THEM.”

I LOVE how the left will support a bunch of dirty, no-job, cr@p throwing, vandalizing socialists – more commonly known as the “Occupy” movement. But give them the opportunity to support a bunch of people who preach love and forgiveness….and its open season to criticize them! Wow!

I just love the fact that you used the expression, “dirty, no-job, cr@p throwing, vandalizing socialists” in the same comment as the words “preach love and forgiveness.” At least one person here should practice what he preaches.

OccupyTheLord, I LOVE how you group all of the Occupy protestors into one category…calling them “dirty (would you EXPECT people who take months of their lives basically living on the streets in protest of what should be the elephant in the room in regards to our economic situation to be “clean”), “cr@p throwing, vandalizing socialists”…refer to their supporters as “the left” (more mindless, dismissive classification/labeling/polarizing/divisive “tactics”)…and then act like “the left” SUPPORTS the isolated events from the least common denominators.

How “Christian” of you. Marginalize much?

And btw, who is “criticizing” these people or their right to be there?

I know plenty of people who lean left but recognized the futility of the “occupiers”.
The “occupy movement” began as a response to disreputable business practices in the finance industry but was derailed by fringe extremists with no clear message.

You say these christians preach “love and forgiveness” and I’m sure that’s true amongst themselves. However, when they’re speaking to non-christians the message is; believe as we do or burn for eternity in a mythical place run by a devil creature. That’s not exactly “love and forgiveness” as the rest of us understand it.

I LOVE how you group all of those associated with the Occupy movement into one category…call them “a bunch of dirty (do you really EXPECT people who were basically living on the streets for months at a time in protest of what should be the elephant in the room in regards to our economy to be “clean”), no-job, cr@p throwing, vandalizing socialists”…and then lump all of the actual movement’s supporters as “the left”…and THEN make it sound like “the left” actually supports those kinds of actions.

How “Christian” of you. Marginalize much?

Btw, who exactly is criticizing these people or their right to be there?

“However, when they’re speaking to non-christians the message is; believe as we do or burn for eternity in a mythical place run by a devil creature.”

Michael, not all Christians think as you describe. You are taking the views of just a few of the many Christian denominations and assuming that all of them think the same way. Not so.

I myself am a Catholic Christian. I don’t even know where I myself am going to go after death, much less where anybody else is going. Many Catholics, at least, believe that even an atheist has a chance for heaven. Several months ago, at an evening theology discussion at my church, a question asked from the audience was “would an atheist go straight to hell, or would he have a chance for heaven?”Both of the priests at my parish gave the same answer: “he would have a chance for heaven.” That is actually what I myself also think.

You need to try to be intelligent enough to recognize that very few ways of thinking are uniformly held across all of Christianity!

Turn off Rush. Nobody is demanding YOU pay for contraceptives. BTW, there are many reasons a woman is prescribed birth control pills and stopping births is just one of them. Birth control pills are a women’s health issue and I hope the republican party rides that wave all the way to the general election as the republican party needs a hard lesson in their far right, aka American Taliban, politics.

What a wonderful thing to do! Rick, death is a part of life. We cannot pray for the dead to come back to life. We must pray that those left behind will look to God for comfort and guidance and give their lives to Jesus Christ in order to receive eternal life after death.

Matt. 6:5 “And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men.
Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward.

When someone thinks that a direct scripture quote proves something, it usually doesn’t.

This particular scripture applies to the pharisees, the social power holders of Jesus’s time. It does not apply to the participants in the Houston Prayer Walk.

The pharisees were the powerful of their community, and were not risking adverse consequences from their public prayer. The Houston Prayer Walk participants mostly are not the powerful of our community; rather they are mostly just ordinary common people. And, they were courageously risking public abuse or worse by their public prayer.

Because the two groups (pharisees and Houston Prayer Walk people) are so vastly different, it makes no sense to think that Christ’s words about the pharisees are also applicable to the Houston Prayer Walk people.

@Honey: Please explain what you mean to convey by citing this verse. If you intend to oppose Christian public prayer as inherently unscriptural, why did Jesus pray, teach and preach in public; why did the apostles enjoin believers to pray at all times, and why are Christians commanded to “not hide their light?” On the other hand, if you mean to imply that the motives of the Christian group are hypocritical, on what basis do you raise that concern? Please think it through, and reply. Blessings to you!

The walk was a great time for believers to unite and pray for our families, co workers, friends, communities, and for the city of Houston. A special thanks to Rigo and fam for the great event! Sammy, Sweet 180 and Jaime God Bless you!

Greg, I am a devout Catholic. If you want to organize and conduct a peaceful and orderly atheist march in Houston, I will not express any opposition to your doing so. Since “atheism” is also a religion, it has the same constitutional rights as other religions, including the right of public visibility.

I support their right to assemble as I support anyone’s right to assemble, occupy, birthers, tea party (most are birthers), liberals, etc., it is what makes us different from most of the planet. Good for them!

Ahh – I knew I could count on some good old fashioned Atheist-trolling. Lessee… we have the obligatory pigs flying comment (predictable – of course, freely interchangeable with the equally inane belief-in-unicorns comparison) as well as the taken-out-of-context (like all other atheist Bible quoting) reference to Matt 6:5. Jesus was referring to the arrogance of the Pharisees (the ones who had Him put to death). Not to mention the other myriad ignorant comments making typical grotesque leaps of logic.

Thank you for this article, Kate. Pastor Ben is an amazing man of God who has cared for and blessed so many. ESPECIALLY those less fortunate.

i’m feeling better already…not. perhaps all this prayer is why the chron only reported 4 shootings, two fatal wrecks, and the odd half dozen or so robberies…yep, i’d say that prayer thingy is working wonders!…

It’s been interesting participating in your blog for these past several days. But:

I notice that very few of your commenters are actually trying to discuss anything intelligently or respectfully. Rather, just about all of the anti-religion people, and many of the pro-religion people, are just trying to shoot off snappy one-liners or two-liners to insult somebody else or to “slap somebody in the face” figuratively.

A commenter who is trying to promote moderate and respectful thinking becomes fatigued very quickly in such an environment.

Also, your long delay in reading, approving, and posting comments slows down the “discussion” and discourages further participation by some. In my opinion, the more intelligent people are the ones most likely to become discouraged and withdraw, and the less intelligent people are more likely to stay on and continue posting their unintelligent one-liners.

So, I might rejoin you again some time if I see an interesting title. But until then, adios, and may the Lord bless you.